Teaching Resources

Your Pay

Best Experience of Supply I Have Had

What makes a brilliant day of supply teaching? Miranda has a few ideas.

The best experience of supply I have had - and continue to have from time to time - are ones where there is a bristling and lively mix of expectations for you to perform as a class teacher, with ideas and a few instructions from the permanent staff. So the day is in part dictated by the children's learning and where they are at - pre-planned - and in part up to you to splice with your own planned lessons, ideas and personality.

In the better schools, where an absence is planned, the teacher has asked to email me about lessons. She has asked that I plan something on a topic the children are covering and she's left it to me to decide how to deliver this. The best supply experiences are always the ones where you are welcomed as part of the team. You are given the information you need - staff room, toilets, teaching assistant support, infomation on children with challenging behaviour and what to do if they are in need of support.

It is always a pleasure to work with teaching assistants who love their job, are proud of the children they work with and know their habits, learning styles and interests like the back of their hands. These people help bridge the gap between theoretical learning - what you had planned to teach in an ideal world - and real learning. The teaching assistant team are also the people who tell the boss whether you are any good or not.

A passing thumbs up from an experienced and respected teaching assistant could see you into a longer-term teaching job, bypassing all the more usual beurocracy and hoop jumping. I love working in classrooms where there are the foot prints of an outstanding teacher all over the place. You get to see how it's done. How does a fabulous primary teacher sort out her marking, her reward systems, her desk drawers, maths starters, grammar learning, her AFL, and her walls and displays? Be a supply teacher and find out the secrets of outstanding teaching and learning for yourself.